At what point do we realize that we are hitting rock bottom? That is a question that I’ve been asking myself for almost 5 years now, I’ve been going through so much shit my entire life that at this point I can’t even tell apart the shit from the happiness, I remember that I used to enjoy going outside to play, or just to sit under a tree to sleep but now everything is so dark, so full of sadness that I don’t even know how to handle life without alcohol and drugs, I’ve lost myself during the journey, I lose my dignity, my self-respect and above all my selflove.

It’s been 11 years since I did a drug for the first time, the only memory that I have about that moment is me seated in a park drunk as hell insulting a self-called “gangster” who was trying to impress my ex-girlfriend playing the role of a thug guy, I knew that the guy was a complete pussy so I faced him but at the moment I didn’t realize that he had a knife, I remember a friend trying to appease things down talking to the guy, I was so goddamn drunk that the only thing that I did was keep insulting the guy, so this friend came at me with a cigarrete, not a regular but a marihuana filled with, and gave it to me, “take this, it’ll make feel better, more relaxed” he told me, so I took it and smoked it all, I started to feel some tickles in my stomach, as the time started to going slower I started to feel more relaxed, that was the day that I fell in love with the marihuana.

After that day, in that specific year, I smoked just a couple times but it was so good, I enjoyed so much those days, sitting under a tree in a local park smoking alone(I forgot to mention that I felt embarrassed for doing it) and enjoying the blue sky by myself laughing at everything, it was perfect I’ve got to admit. The years after that I started to smoke more frequently, the amounts of weed increased considerably in the days after, I started buying grams, then eights, then half ounces and then without even realizing it I was buying pounds of weed, selling weed to people that I thought were my friends, smoking every single day all day long, I use to wake with my pipe right next to my head(I’m still doing it though, at least until last week), smoking before taking a shower, before and after eating, basically to do anything, so the time passed by and the years so as well, at this point of the story it’s been 6 years since the first time that I did marihuana, a drug dealer I was without realizing it, for me it was just a way to get free weed and some cash to buy me things, and then happened to happen that I became an adult, a citizen in law terms, my first ID now I could do whatever I want, so stupidly I thought, I remember that the very first thing that I did was go to a bar and get drunk as hell, but this time legally because now I was able to drink as much as I wanted and where ever I wanted. That night I got arrested for the very first time, for possession and public intoxication, that day I learned a valuable lesson, I wasn’t a kid anymore, I couldn’t just talk things out anymore, at that moment I had been stopped by the police so many times but never arrested because I was a minor, now I was sitting in a small cell waiting for someone to pick me up with and realizing that from now on things would be different.

After that moment I started to become more shady, at that moment everything that I’d seen in the movies started to make sense, the killings, the dirty money, the addicts and how people like me were destroying lives pretending that nothing was wrong, I became quieter and harder, the weed business wasn’t all fun anymore, now I was aware that I was a drug dealer not a friendly florist, it was at that moment that I started to realize that I was destroying myself, not because weed is bad but because it wasn’t about the weed anymore, it was about the dirty business that I was running, could’ve been any other drug that the background was the same, I bought it from a kinpin from my hood that was well known for being a son of a bitch but I didn’t mind it because he sold it cheap to me.

Have you ever wonder how would’ve been your life if your parents had money? For a boy raised in the middle of poverty that’s was a daily basis question. I can go back in my memories as far as the first day that I went to daycare, I don’t know if it is even possible but I remember the very first time that I went outside with other kids to play, I remember the funny smell in the backyard, the old toys, the poor children’s faces and the weeping making echo in my head all day long, I was 3 years old by the time, my mother worked in a tea factory, she used to be out for almost the whole day.

As I started growing up I remember becoming more aware of what was happening around me, I remember when I was 5 years old and mothers day was approaching, I thought about so many presents for my momma, I wanted to buy her a house, a car, a big TV and some nice clothing, I’ll never forget that day, that was the day that I realized that if you want to live a nice life you need money, I was not even bothered by the fact that I didn’t have any money back in the days but when I first understood this idea, this reality I remember that in my head an idea started to grow, a very simple idea, I wanted to be rich to buy my momma everything that she wanted and have her happy so I could spend all day with her, in home, together.

I can say that idea never left my mind, I’m still mortified by the idea of not having money, it was so stressful to grow up realizing that you belong to a part of society that has been designed to fill a big hole in the perfect idea of a system, poverty was thought years before I was born, made to create people blindly docile and willing to give their lives for other people’s dreams(or nightmares should I say), a system that pursuits that you never get a decent education or an oportunity to explode all your strengths.

I see myself now, as an adult, and I’m nothing but another victim of the insecurities and the stupidity of this society, I’ve always thought that I was smart but actually I was so dumb, how could I not see what it was happening, I’d lost myself during the process that I like to call “select, take and dispose” which is, in simple terms, select a person, take advantage of what you need from them and then just dispose them, like a used napkin after eating, I was so bright and so full of joy, but then life came at me.

As I started to get into my teenage years I started to feel more interested in different things like making friends, fit in the little society called high school(I’ll dedicate another entrance just for this topic), get a girl, basically be a “cool” boy, so dumb I was… I can clearly remember two aspects of the same moment, starts with me staring at myself at the mirror, at first I can see myself as an ordinary boy, healthy, regular, even handsome and then I have this other memory, staring at the mirror and wondering why my teeth were crooked, why I had pimples in my face, why my skincolor was so “dirty”, why did I look poor, I was living a lie, thinking that I was just like everyone else, I was not, or at leats they didn’t see me as one of them, I was the poor kid.

I never got the attention that I wanted from the girls in high school, I was never cool, actually they use make fun of me all the time, I was weak, eventhough that I went through a lot of shit as I was growing up I was still being the weak kid, the weird kid, it was until one day I decied to hold my ground, I was 14 by the time and I decided that no one was going to mess with me anymore and that day was the day that I lose myself, that I changed, I left everything behind, my good grades, that little matter because I never got anything from them, my obedient behavior, my good manners, everything stayed behind, in my mind I had only one idea, get rich and start treating everybody as if they were my fucking employees, I wanted so bad to humilliate them as they did it to me that I lose myself in the way, now a days I’m not even a shadow of that bright and full oy joy boy that I was, 25years old, drug addict, depressed, lonely, tattoed, lazy, stubborn, arrogant and with psycopath tendences, with a deep hate for the society and this crooked system, curious thing to say that now that my teeth are not crooked my heart is, there is not a single day that I don’t think about being rich it is just that now the methods are not the same from when I was a kid, now a days I’m just waiting for the perfect moment and the perfect job.

I will never forget the first time that I felt something happening in my pants, I was 6 years old when a classmate in kindergarden asked me to play with her, I remember that as kids we were playing “house” but at certain point things started to get real weird, she asked me to lay in bed with her in a little house that we had back in there where all children used to gather to sleep and rest, I remember that I was playing when out of nowhere she grabbed me by the crotch, not gently enough as I would’ve wanted but long enough for my little man to stand up, I didn’t know what it was happening so I freaked out, I went into the bathroom and hide in there for almost an hour until my teacher went looking for me.

I went out of the bathroom really scared and I didn’t want to tell her about what happened, later that day when I went home I remember that I spent the rest of the day thinking what in the goddamn hell happened, I had nobody to ask for it, eventhough that I was a kid I knew that women didn’t have a penis so I just couldn’t ask my mom nor any of my relatives, it was very weird because although I didn’t know what happened something inside me made me feel like that the whole thing was wrong, that I was impure or evil(my family was mad catholic so you’ll guess from where I took those ideas).

Time passed and eventually I stopped thinking about the matter, I remember trying to stay away from that little kid, she intimidated me, I think since that event my mind has always felt attracted and the very same time intimidated by the female nature, it was very difficult for me as I grew up to relationate with women in a sexual way also brecause of my family, eventhough that I grew up with so many women around me I was never actually “introduced” in the sexuality world nor by my mother or the rest of my family, included my grandfather, so as a teenager I was so confused but at the very same time back in those days I had to keep this reputation of badboy, not because I wanted to be one but because I needed it, so I couldn’t just go and ask anyone, I had to learn from what I heard and from porn, thinking it now it sounds such a stupid idea, the worst model for men trying to learn about sex, such misogynous and delusional industry.

What did I learn at the end? that it doesn’t matter how much you think that a simple thing as a sexual conversation won’t change things it actually does, seeing myself with 25 years and being so afraid for sexual encounters made me realize that a lot of my sexual experiences are full of humilliating moments and masculinity opressing partners, all because of my failed development as a child and as a man.

This is a little introduction to a particular individual born and raised in the middle of misfortunes, as many latin boys I was raised mostly by women, I grew up with my mother, my great-grandmother, my sister, my great aunt and 5 of my mother´s cousins, in our house my only patternal figure was my great uncle, my real grandfather for me, who was a very inhibited and serious man.

I grew up in a very limited but lovely home enviroment, even though that my mother spent most of her time working to support us, we were a very united family, for me growing up as a very sensitive and romantic boy was very normal until I turned 10 years old, I will never forget the very first time that I had to deal with the feeling of being ashamed just for who I was, I remember that I was in love with a very young and nice girl, I used to spend a lot of time with her, talking and flirtting most of the time, until one day out of nowhere a foreign boy, who was repeating the year, told me that he was going to beat me up just because he liked the girl that I liked, I remember that I tried just to calm things down but instead of looking as a calm dude I looked as a coward, everybody started laughing at me and calling me names, I remember that even the girl that I was with started to laugh, for me that was the beggining of the desensitizing process that I subdue myself to.

I remember that I spent all the night of that day thinking what did I do wrong, why everybody was laughing when I was just trying to talk out of the problem in peace, it went like that for a long time in which I started to becoming a shy, lonely and very quiet boy, later that year I came to the realization that nobody wants to have peace, in this world ruled by competition, where the law of the survival of the fittest is the ultimate law above all idea of civilized behavior, those like me who try to make peace are doomed to failure and pain, it was a very hard moment for a 10 years old kid, I remember having that feeling of supression on your chest, feeling that everything that you think, like, say or express in any form is wrong, looking backward now everything makes sense, in what I have become or all the reactions that I’ve had throughout my life, but that is something for another day, for the moment I just wanted to tell a little bit about that specific moment which marked me as a restrained heart, the beggining of a process of healing and introspection for a man who went from a very lovely, intelligent and outgoing boy to a tough, senseless and insensitive man.

“… I just wanted to tell a little bit about that specific moment which marked me as a restrained heart…”

You can say that I am, what many would call, a tough guy, not because I am a killer, nor a ganster, but because for all the shit that I’ve been going through since I was a little child, growing up with a 15 years old mother was for me like growing up with a kid, you know my mother always did what she thought was the best for us, but that doessn’t mean that it was, I remember that my great-grandfather always look upon us but not necessarily as a father but as charity, don’t get me wrong I loved him the most, and I stiil do although he passed away 8 years ago, but it was very hard for such a smart boy to grow up not knowing anything about women, or how to be a man.

I spent a lot of time watching other kid’s fathers, trying to figure out how to be a man, for me it was a very funny experiment, I always tried to see it as a give, not having someone telling me how to be or what to do, but now that I’m a grow man I see back in the time and I feel that I needed so much, I’ve become a lost soul not because of my lack of father or because of my young mother but because that’s what I choose, I never had anybody telling me how to be good, although that I have a lot of people by my side it’s been a very lonely life you know.